


i'll be waiting

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Separations, Waiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8562838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: Steve has a phone that he carries in his breast pocket. Sometimes he opens the phone and stares at the blank screen, stares at the empty display. He wills it to ring. He left the number with one person and one person only, and when the call comes, he will drop every last thing and go.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [getluckywithbucky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/getluckywithbucky/gifts).



> Happy birthday, [getluckywithbucky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/getluckywithbucky)! You wanted fluff. This is...not really that? I do apologize for that. But it does have a happy ending!

Steve has a phone that he carries in his breast pocket. He moves it from jacket to jacket, from shirt to shirt. He is never without it. He sleeps with it pressed to his face. He knows Sam has seen it, but he doesn’t ask and Steve doesn’t explain. It makes him feel guilty, a bit. But he’s not trying to hide it. He just…can’t. He can’t talk about it. He can’t explain. He’s pretty sure Sam knows anyway.

Sometimes Steve takes the phone out and looks at it. It’s an old phone, one he picked up at a gas station in Turkey on one of his trips. It’s a flip phone, a burner. Sam told him once only drug dealers still had flip phones, and it’s fitting, in a way. He’s obsessive about it, needs what’s going to be on the other end without regard for consequences or damage.

Sometimes he opens the phone and stares at the blank screen, stares at the empty display. He wills it to ring. He left the number with one person and one person only, and when the call comes, he will drop every last thing and go.

If the call ever comes.

Three months pass, and then four, and then seven, and soon it’s been ten months. He takes the phone out less often than he did at first, but he still doesn’t leave it behind, not ever. Not when Ross’s troops caught up to him in Moldova and his jacket caught on a fence, not when bullets rained down in St. Petersburg and Natasha screamed at him to dive for cover.

Eleven months. He has a full beard and he doesn’t think about it, doesn’t look at himself in the mirror. He’s never had a beard before. He couldn’t grow one, back before. His facial hair came in patchy and embarrassing. Bucky—

He stops himself.

The phone rings while he is lying in a bathtub in Arequipa, blood streaming from a knife wound in his thigh and three of his toes at odd angles from his foot. He curses and bites harder on his belt as Sam stitches his leg and he screams, just a bit, muffled by the leather, before spitting out the leather and pulling the phone from the pocket of his shirt, resting against his heart.

“Are you fucking serious?” Sam grunts. “ _Now_ he calls?” So Sam did know, all along. Steve thinks he might find that comforting. Maybe later.

“Bucky,” he gasps into the phone. There’s a pause long enough for Steve to remember the feeling in his leg and he groans as quietly as possible.

“Are you hurt?”

He shudders a little at the sound of Bucky’s voice. “Yeah,” he admits, because blood loss always loosens his tongue. “Are you?”

“No,” Bucky says. “They got rid of my triggers.”

“Good,” Steve says. His whole body’s trembling now, and he doesn’t know if it’s shock or pain or Bucky’s voice. “When?”

Another pause. “Two weeks ago.”

Now it’s pain that ripples through Steve, but not from the stab wound. “Oh,” he says, voice shrinking down as small as it can go.

“Are you coming back?” Bucky asks.

Sam bites off the end of the thread and covers the stitches with a bandage. It’s all kind of superfluous, mostly, because Steve’s body will just close it all up again anyway, but Sam is always resistant to letting Steve bleed.

“The toes are gonna hurt like a bitch,” Sam warns.

“Wait,” Steve tells him. “Wait, please wait.” Sam stills. He would’ve waited anyway, since Steve’s on the phone, but Steve saying _please_ threw him off a little.

“Bucky,” Steve says. “Bucky, can you find me?” He doesn’t think he’s making any sense. He feels like he has a fever, like he’s ninety-pounds and burning up, screaming for his mother. “I can’t walk right now.”

“Can you send me coordinates?” Bucky asks. He’s so calm and Steve’s getting mad, which isn’t totally rational but Steve’s curled up in a bathtub with stitches in his thigh and broken toes while Bucky’s half a world away. He’s allowed to be mad, maybe.

“We can’t stay in one place,” Steve says angrily. Bucky takes it in stride, and Steve has the sudden, horrifying thought that Bucky is used to taking anger, and it makes him turn his head and throw up in the drain.

“Shit, come on,” Sam complains, pulling his hands away quickly.

“Send me coordinates whenever you can,” Bucky says.

“You’ll find me?” Steve asks. He’s begging now, stumbling to get the words out. “Find me, please, Bucky.”

“I’ll find you,” Bucky says softly. “You found me. I’ll find you.”

He hangs up and Steve carefully hands the phone to Sam. “Coordinates,” he says. Sam looks at him for a minute, then takes the phone and enters their coordinates. “Thank you,” Steve says, suddenly drop-dead weary.

Sam uses the docility to shove Steve’s belt back between his teeth and re-break Steve’s already-healing toes. Steve throws up again, but Sam doesn’t complain this time.

 

Bucky doesn’t find him in Arequipa. Bucky doesn’t find him in Rio Blanco. Bucky doesn’t find him in Caracas.

Two months pass. Bucky hasn’t found him. Steve sends coordinates without getting a response. He doesn’t know if Bucky’s even still looking. Maybe Bucky quit. Maybe he never left Wakanda. Maybe he got captured. Pretty much every government in the world is after him, and every bounty hunter, too.

He keeps texting coordinates. He doesn’t care if he gets caught because of it. He won’t stop. But he stops texting coordinates every night. He stops taking the phone out of his pocket just to look. He doesn’t want to see the blank screen anymore. He can’t look at the call log and see the one call. He can’t look at the outgoing text messages.

Bucky doesn’t find him across the ocean in Porto. Bucky doesn’t find him Liechtenstein. Steve wants to throw the phone to the ground, stomp on it until the blank screen stops mocking him. He wants to drive his fist into the wall over and over until he’s bleeding, until rage stops ballooning in his throat.

He puts the phone back in his breast pocket and ties his shoes, goes to find Sam.

They’re climbing up a mountain in Austria. Steve doesn’t want to be here. He never wants to be here again. He doesn’t know which mountain broke Bucky’s body, but it doesn’t matter. He blames them all.

It’s spring, almost summer now. There are villages up here now. It’s completely different this time. Steve hates it on principle.

There’s someone sitting on a rock near the summit. Steve stops breathing. He starts running. Bucky stands up off the rock and Steve stops with twenty feet between them. They stare across a meadow at each other and Steve waits, like he has been for so long.

Bucky looks back at him, looks him up and down and nods a few times. Steve is suddenly seized by the complete _terror_ that Bucky’s going to turn around and just leave him there. Bucky wanted to be alone before. Maybe he does now, too.

“Steve,” Bucky says softly. Steve’s not sure he actually heard it, but he saw Bucky’s lips move and he knows the shape of his own name in Bucky’s mouth. Steve doesn’t move. He can hear Sam breathing behind him, far enough back that Steve knows he’s trying to give them space but he’s still wary, still watching Steve’s back.

“Steve,” Bucky repeats, a little louder this time. He crosses the distance between them and comes up close. They just stand there, looking, and then Bucky bites his lip, brings his one hand up to cradle Steve’s face. “Steve,” he whispers. He kisses Steve, and Steve finally moves. He laces his hands around Bucky’s back, and he holds on as tight as he can.

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted at [my tumblr](http://www.biblionerd07.tumblr.com)


End file.
